Facebook is retiring its email address system, the company announced on Monday.

From now on, any emails sent to a users @facebook.com email address — which all Facebook users could claim upon signing up for the social network — will now be automatically forwarded to the default personal email address used to sign up for the site…

It's not for lack of trying to make it work. Two years ago, Facebook gave users a nudge toward using their Facebook.com email addresses by switching the default settings and displaying those addresses on users' pages without letting them know beforehand. It did not go over well.

Devices are commoditizing, operating systems are commodities and the Android platform is a commodity. Value will not be captured in any of these technology modules. Ecosystems are another matter. It's where Facebook (and its acquisitions) reside. It's where Google lives and it's where iTunes has been for a decade.

Nokia's adoption of AOSP as an operating system is consistent with the ecosystem strategy set forth three years ago, and is also consistent with Microsoft's competitive strategy.

Which is why I believe Microsoft is not only comfortable with this development but had agreed to it over a year ago when work on this initiative was already well under way.

By using a camera and computer vision software it is possible to make a fish control a robot car over land. By swimming towards an interesting object, the fish can explore the world beyond the limits of his tank.

There's been lots of speculation about what this announcement means for Microsoft and about our pending acquisition of Nokia's Devices and Services business. Here are a couple of points to put things into context.

First, our transaction with Nokia has not yet closed. Today, we operate as two independent companies as required by antitrust law, and we will until the acquisition is complete. The anticipated close timeframe for the acquisition remains end of the first quarter of 2014.

Second, we're pleased to see Microsoft services like Skype, OneDrive and Outlook.com being introduced on these devices. This provides the opportunity to bring millions of people, particularly in growth markets, into the Microsoft family. The Skype team on Monday announced an offer in select markets for the first customers who purchase a Nokia X, one month of Skype's Unlimited World Subscription. Read the Skype blog for more details.

According to a new data gathered by Statistic Brain, it seems Windows Phone users are more willing to pay for apps compared to Android, with iOS users being on top of the list.

According to the data collected by Statistic Brain, 62% of Android users never paid a dollar for an app, while the number is a little lower for Windows Phone - currently at 58%. Even when you compare the number of downloads on each platform, Android has a whopping 29bn downloads compared to 4.1 billion on Windows Phone, the difference is massive. In terms of total app store revenue, Android generated $1.2bn, while the Windows Phone Store racked up $950m.

In other words, a mean of 4.1c per app on Android v 23.1c per app on Windows Phone. For iOS? 23.7c. BlackBerry? 22.9c. Here are the numbers.

351m new smartphones shipped to stores across China in 2013, according to data from market intelligence firm IDC. That means China accounts for just over one-third of all smartphone shipments around the world at the end of 2013. Smartphones now account for over 80% of China's total phone sales.

While shipments don't equate to sales (who knows how many are lying unsold on shelves or in warehouses), the number gives us a good sense of the momentum behind smartphones in the nation. It's harder to tell how many active smartphone users there are in China – mainly due to China's much-altered Android phones not registering with the mothership at Google – but search giant Baidu reckons there were 270m active Android users in China in Q3 2013.

The AOSP phones sold in China do count for the purposes of "Android" tallies in IDC's and Gartner's figures, though, which can be confusing to some. Now Nokia is on the AOSP bandwagon too, maybe more clarity will follow.